Abstract
ABSTRACTThere are changing dynamics among political regionalization processes and the rescaling of nation-states in Europe. However, updated and timely research remains scant, ambiguous and unable to meet the challenges of data-driven societies and uneven borders. Nations’ physical boundaries matter as much as political borders in their pervasive and growing algorithmic, stateless, liquid and metropolitan citizenship patterns. This paper explores these new ‘connectographies’ from a regional science perspective, introducing the term ‘algorithmic nations’ as a city-regional and techno-political conceptual assemblage. A case study is presented of the small stateless city-regionalized European nation of the Basque Country through its analytical and transitional lens, locally known as ‘Euskal Hiria’ (Basque city-region in the Basque language). This paper questions whether the Basque Country could evolve by (1) modifying its governmental logics and (2) merging its three separate devolved administrations (3) while enabling their direct interactions with citizens (4) through blockchain technologies as the small state of Estonia is implementing and employing cutting-edge algorithmic governance frameworks. In doing so, this paper suggests how four drivers – metropolitanization, devolution, the right to decide and blockchain – may be respectively invigorating four dynamics – geoeconomics, geopolitics, geodemocratics and geotechnologics – in this transition towards the algorithmic nations. Ultimately, this paper concludes with an algorithmic nations research and policy agenda decalogue of how these geotechnological changes might determine the future position of small stateless city-regionalized nations in the European Union.
Highlights
ALGORITHMIC, STATELESS, LIQUID AND METROPOLITAN CITIZENSHIP RESCALING NATION-STATES IN EUROPEPeople today are increasingly digitally connected unwittingly through artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning devices that remain unevenly and pervasively distributed, fuelling a liquid sense of global and algorithmic cosmopolitan citizenship (Bridle, 2016; Morozov, 2018)
The first is the territorial representation system outlined in the Law of the Historic Territories (LHT), enshrining the political autonomy of the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC)’s three historic territories of Araba, Bizkaia and Gipuzkoa, which applies to Navarre (CCN) as a historic territory
With the prospect of a digital revolution that will shift the understanding of a regional space by its citizens and governments, how will Euskal Hiria – with its networked, highly fragmented, decentralized, complex and confederal geopolitical sum of parts – evolve? This paper presents three standpoints on the debate about Euskal Hiria: 1. The assumption of the univocal meaning of Euskal Hiria as technocratic, neoliberal and institutionally driven seems to be rather biased, adding the same critique given to the buzzword ‘smart city’ (Calzada & Cobo, 2015)
Summary
ALGORITHMIC, STATELESS, LIQUID AND METROPOLITAN CITIZENSHIP RESCALING NATION-STATES IN EUROPE. The applications of blockchain technology are numerous because they allow disintermediation in ways that can potentially empower people in trade, expression, democratic participation, social interaction and financial freedom (Al-Saqaf & Seidler, 2017) All these functionalities assist small states (proven by Estonia and they might assist small stateless cityregionalized nations such the Basque Country) in data-rich services in highly concentrated metropolitan areas through e-residence platforms, fiscal devolution schemes and direct democracy, as will be shown (Opatowsky, 2017; The Verge, 2018). 63) sees ‘global civil society’ assemblages between the binary national and global while overlooking the emergent city-regional techno-political manifestations by stateless and liquid citizens supplied with decentralized access, interconnectivity and simultaneity of transactions demanding direct representation in international fora, even bypassing nationalstate authority This is a longstanding cause that has been significantly enabled by global electronic decentralized networking and increasingly filtered through blockchain ledgers. Could the algorithmic nations be the new city-regional and techno-political assemblage that can bring together a global citizenship from the nexus of territory–authority–rights (Sassen, 2008)? algorithmic nations emerges amidst the reworked geography of nation-state power through a diverse set of city-regions where different techno-political data, bits and pieces of their liquid and metropolitan citizens evolve as a geographical assemblage of decentralized authority, continually negotiated and renegotiated within the nation-state and through supranational multi-governance instrumentarium
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